
Research does suggest that music helps with memorisation.

This makes them less efficient on the tasks. In addition, loud or ‘angry’ music has negative effects on reading comprehension, as well as mood. Several studies show that students who listen to music while completing tasks such as reading and writing tend to be less efficient, and don’t absorb much information compared to those who don’t listen to music. So if you need music to relax and get you in a better mood, which leads to a better quality study session, then it’s worth a try.Ĭould listening to music while studying impair learning? Source: Shutterstock When you have better sleep habits, you tend to be less stressed out, which leads to a more productive day of studying.įor long study sessions, background music is helpful as students are more focused and motivated when they are in a good mood, which helps them endure studying for a longer time. Since music helps to chill you out, you can also sleep better. Cortisol is a hormone that is usually responsible for feelings of stress and anxiety. Research has found that listening to music actually lowers your cortisol levels. Music that is relaxing also helps students with stress and anxiety, thus leading them to study more efficiently. Studies have found that people may be better at solving problems when they are in a positive mood compared to when they are in a negative or neutral mood. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that promotes feelings of happiness and excitement. However, listening to music can make you a happier person, as music releases pleasurable emotions and increases dopamine levels.Īccording to research, listening to music triggers the release of dopamine in our brains. What about mood? Does music improve moods? Source: Shutterstock Therefore, it has not been proven that listening to classical music, or any music for that matter, actually makes a person smarter or more intelligent. They found zero evidence that IQ levels can actually increase when listening to classical music. Ten years after the theory became wildly popular, a team of researchers gathered the results from almost 40 studies conducted on the Mozart Effect, and found very little evidence that listening to classical music really does help performance of specific tasks. Firstly, college students were only tested on spatial intelligence, which required them to do tasks such as folding a paper or maze-solving, which is just one type of intelligence.

The Mozart effect was later found to be misleading, and some now call it the Mozart myth. This led to the birth of development toys involving classical music for children, and advice to pregnant women to place headphones on their bellies for their babies to hear classical music so that they would, purportedly, be born smart. When it was reported, the media ran with it, proclaiming that ‘classical music helps kids become smarter’. In 1993, he reported that a group of college students increased their IQ levels as much as nine points as a result of listening to Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.”

This led them to test the results of classical music on college students’ brains. It was dubbed the Mozart Effect by Dr Gordon Shaw, who conducted research on the brain capacity for spatial reasoning.Īlong with his graduate student Xiodan Leng, he developed a model of the brain and used musical notes to represent brain activity, which resembled that of classical music notes when analysed. The theory that listening to music, particularly classical music, makes people smarter, was developed in the early 1990s. Can music really help a person study better? Source: Shutterstock
